There was Jerry Slade. He was passing something to a knot of peers. A poster? Magazine? But Laura Anne was not interested in that.
She bent over the fountain as Jerry passed. She noted the teenager’s backpack. Jerry broke from his acolytes as Laura Anne saw him do every day to reach a row of lockers in the hall. It was a combination lock. He spun the dial, snicked it loose. The door opened. A shouted challenge from Harvey Koon delayed the deposit briefly, but finally Jerry tossed his bag into the locker and rejoined the swell of students headed for the cafeteria.
Laura Anne waited until the hall was empty of students or faculty. She then walked with purpose to the hall closet where Alfred Land had eaten his lunch every school day for twenty-three years.
“Hello, Mr. Alfred.”
He was wiping a smear of mayonnaise off his ham sandwich.
“Why, yes, Miz Raines. Nice to see you.”
“You, too, Mr. Alfred. I need to borrow a tool.”
The old man smiled. “Well, if I got it, you can have it.”
The hall was deserted by the time Laura Anne returned to Jerry Slade’s locker. She had assured Mr. Alfred that she didn’t need his help. She popped open her cell phone and dialed 911.
“Yes, please. This is Laura Anne Raines. I believe I have just witnessed the deposit of a handgun in a locker here at the high school.… Yes, I’m right here.… Yes, I can wait.”
* * *
Minutes later Principal Alton Folsom was trailing red-faced behind Sheriff Lou Sessions on his way down the school’s long hall.
“Miz Raines, what on earth are you up to here?”
“I saw what appeared to be a handgun put into this locker,” Laura Anne replied steadily.
“Whose locker is it?” Sessions was chewing tobacco.
“I have no idea.”
“That a pair of bolt-cutters, Miz Raines?” The sheriff’s mouth sealed a wad beneath his pockmarked face.
“Bolt-cutters. Yes, Sheriff. I borrowed them from Alfred.”
“Thoughtful. You sure it was a weapon?”
“Reasonably sure, Sheriff. Metal and silver. Appeared to have a barrel.”
“I don’t want to start a precedent here—” the principal began.
Laura Anne cut him off. “You want to risk a shooting at school, Mr. Folsom?”
The words were directed at the principal, but Laura Anne faced Lou Sessions eye to eye.
“Do you really want to ignore a warning from a teacher that a weapon may have been concealed in a place where parents want their children to be safe? Do you want to risk a killing? Do we need another Columbine to take that prospect seriously?”
“Well, I … I…”
“It’s all right, Alton.” Sessions reached for the bolt-cutters. “Cain’t hurt to take a look.”
The sheriff fit the bolt-cutter’s jaws over the lock’s hasp. Within seconds the keep was open.
“All I see’s a knapsack.”
“Yes,” Laura Anne nodded. “That’s where he put it.”
“‘He?’” Lou asked and opened the sack.
For a while the sheriff just stood, frowning, as if trying to peer to the bottom of a dark well.
“Well, what’s in there?” the principal blurted. The sheriff pulled out a photo.
The angle taken was disorienting, at first. The photo was stolen from a height, looking down at white panties pulled over brown ankles. Isabel Hernandez’s startled face, framed with bows, looked up at her photographer.
“Whose bin is this?” Sessions growled.
Alton stammered some kind of equivocation.
“Is there a camera in the knapsack, Sheriff?” Laura Anne interrupted.
He groped inside and pulled out a silver shape of metal. A camera.
“That was what I took for a weapon,” Laura Anne stated without apology. “It belongs, as I’m sure Mr. Folsom can confirm for you, to Jerry Slade.”
After a short consult with the sheriff, Pricipal Folsom seemed suddenly determined to take action. Laura Anne was between classes when she saw Jerry Slade emerge from the principal’s office in the sheriff’s custody.
“You bitch.” The teenager cast the epithet calmly, with no heat. “You nigger bitch.”
“But she nailed your ass, didn’t she, Jerry?” The sheriff grabbed him by the belt. And then, facing Laura Anne, “Didn’t she now?”
* * *
The day after Thanksgiving Jerry Slade went with his father before the elected county judge where mandatory counseling and probation were meted out.
“This will not,” Thurman Shaw informed his client’s father brusquely, “absolve you or your son from civil action.”
“Civil? Civil what?”
“The family has the legal right to sue, Rolly. I just want you to be aware that your legal obligations do not end with a first offense and a slap on the wrist. And you need to understand the terms of the restraining order on your boy, here.”
“Jerry’s not gonna take any more pictures.”
“He’d better not. And I am informing the school’s so-called principal myself that Jerry is prohibited by courts order from any chore that would take him anywhere on the elementary side of the school. And do I need to tell you where to put that camera?”
“Who you working for anyway, Thurman?”
“You’ll be back before the judge in one month. I’d advise you to come with a report from your chosen therapist to assure His Honor that counseling has been ongoing.”
“Is there anything else a man can do?” Rolly was white with fury.
“Yes.” Thurman loosened his tie. “Let your one remaining dog off that damned chain. And take some time with your son.”
Stacy Kline covered the entire affair, playing as much as possible on the fact that Laura Anne was wife to an acting lawman and a potential candidate for sheriff, asking if Barrett had counseled Laura Anne regarding the legal propriety of her actions.
“No.” Laura Anne offered a one-word response to that question and refused further comment. The community was split over her initiative, half the citizens voicing fury at her invasion of a teenager’s privacy, the other half relieved that a school pornographer had been caught. Even if the victim were only Mexican.
No one seemed to challenge the idea that the smooth-metaled implement might have been mistaken for a weapon.
No one, that is, except Sheriff Lou Sessions.
“Your wife set that boy up.” Sheriff Sessions detained Bear after a Wednesday briefing. “She couldn’t get Alton to do anything, so she just figured herself out a way to get me down there.”
“You had probable cause, Sheriff. It was a legal search.”
“She jerked my goddamn chain to get it. And you try and tell me you didn’t know a thing about it?”
“Lou. Not everybody thinks, or acts, or feels the way you do. If you don’t figure that out, and quick, you’re gonna lose a whole lot more than some damned election.”
Barrett was heading out of the sheriff’s dungeon when the lawman spoke up.
“She did the right thing.”
“What?” Barrett was not sure he had heard correctly.
“Laura Anne.” Lou nodded from his desk. “She did exactly the right thing. Same thing I’d’ve done.”
“You think so?” Barrett was too surprised to offer more.
The sheriff nodded. “Yep. I’d’ve done it. Question, Bear: Would you?”
Barrett thought a long moment.
“I don’t know whether Laura Anne lied or not to get you into that locker, Sheriff. But she’s not taken an oath to protect and defend. She’s not an officer of the court. You and I—we have different rules.”
“And you never break ’em?” The seamed and hardened sheriff asked it quietly.
“Tell you what, Lou. We get some trust between us. Put some bad guys in jail. I might feel better about answering that question.”
For the first time in a long time Barrett saw some genuine warmth on the face of the county
’s sheriff.
“Fair enough,” Lou said. “What are you and that Canuck gonna be doing after you leave here?”
“Got some information on Gary’s foreman we need to follow up.”
“Got anything to do with our killing?”
“Honestly, Lou—I don’t know if it ties in at all. But there’s only one way to find out.”
* * *
Jarold Pearson offered to drive Barrett and Cricket out to the deer camp that held Isabel’s and a dozen other families. A steady rain drummed on the hood of Jarold’s Tahoe. The cold front had stalled against a buffer of humid Gulf air to produce a deluge that washed out roads and culverts all over the county. The flatwoods were, for a welcome change, saturated. Barrett stretched out in the back of Jarold’s Fish & Game vehicle, giving Bonet the shotgun seat. Much more room, in here, than in the Impala. And Barrett was grateful to have four wheels pulling.
Jarold informed them that the camp itself was on a lease that could normally be reached in about a half-hour from Mayo’s town square, but today it would take longer. He was right. After twenty minutes on the county road, it took another twenty minutes of slipping and sliding through drenched ruts of mud before Jarold found the narrow cleft in a wall of pine that led to the camp.
A community of refugees materialized slowly out of the rain and pine, emerging in shapes at first indistinct before coming into sharper focus. Between swipes of windshield wipers, Barrett made out jerry-rigged shelters, tarpaulins mostly, draped over saplings to make rude canopies or tents. As they entered the camp he spotted two shacks that appeared original to the site, fairly large. Shingles and tarpaper. The doors would not close on their own. They banged open and shut in synchrony with the wipers’ cycle, and through those unsecured doors you could see the yellow fade of newspaper that offered dangerous and flammable insulation.
Isabel was playing ankle deep in mud beside the one water pump. Barrett saw one small child squatting alongside. Took him a moment to realize she was urinating. The grownups padding back and forth between tarps or sheds seemed unconcerned for the girl’s hygiene or their own. As the lawmen pulled to a stop, Barrett saw Dolores step from the nearest shack to bundle her daughter inside.
She stiffened momentarily as Jarold Pearson debarked. But then Barrett got out of the vehicle to bring recognition and relief.
Barrett let Jarold begin with formal greetings. Hospitality was offered in return—an astounding thing, Barrett thought, given the obvious poverty of the worker’s situation.
He accepted instant coffee without sugar or cream, taken beneath a tarpaulin. Dolores introduced Barrett and the other lawmen to Isabel’s father—“Mi esposo.” Jorge Hernandez stood with his hat in hand during the entire conversation that followed. Probably a half-dozen men joined in. Two women, besides Dolores.
They all knew that the boy who took dirty pictures of Isabel had been brought before a judge and punished because of the Negro teacher. They knew, too, that the black woman who had championed Isabel was Barrett’s wife, and that Señor Slade’s son was forced to admit his crime and apologize, in writing, for his misdemeanor. Isabel rushed inside, fetching the court-ordered apology for the lawmen’s admiration.
Jerry Slade was also restrained by court order from riding the bus, Barrett learned. Isabel could now ride to school without fear of her stalker. But Laura Anne had new antagonists in Principal Alton Folsom and school board member Rolly Slade, the very folks whose blessing she needed to be hired full-time. The laborers seemed to fully appreciate that dimension of Laura Anne’s sacrifice. Will she be fired? workers anxiously asked on her behalf. Will Señor Folsom take reprisal?
The fact that Laura Anne was willing to put her job at risk on behalf of Isabel was what ultimately gained her parents’ trust and, by extension, the trust of the migrants in the Hernandez camp. And once these curious, nomadic people extended their trust, it was as absolute as a child’s.
Barrett asked first if the community could give him more details about El Toro.
They all had the same complaint. You either took the Bull’s wages and paid him a kickback or you never baled straw.
“(We would like to move on. Find work elsewhere,”) a soiled Latin man told Barrett. “(But we don’t even have money for gasoline!)”
Was the Bull a violent man? Barrett asked.
An old, weather-lined laborer chattered vociferously in response to that question.
“I couldn’t follow him,” Barrett turned to Jarold.
The game warden worked the toe of his boot into the sand as if extinguishing a cigarette in the damp earth.
“The grandfather here says that his son was killed by El Toro.”
“Killed?” Cricket was suddenly alert.
A young Latino drew his hand across a throat tattooed with a wreath of serpents.
“Muerte. Sí.”
“But never charged,” Jarold finished his translation. “In fact, the señor blames the police. So I don’t know how much credibility we ought to give to his story.”
“Absolutely correct,” Barrett replied, and then returned his attention to the gathered migrants.
“(How did the foreman get his nickname, the Bull?)”
“(Because of the women.)”
“(I see. So he is a ladies’ man?)”
That did not translate well. Barrett tried again.
“(Women like the Bull?)”
“(Oh, no,)” came the reply. “(He abuses them. He turns them to prostitution. Rapes them. Even his own niece he pimps.)”
“(His niece. Does she live in a camp?)”
A collective shrug of the shoulders.
“(She started in the straw. But when she began to bleed …)”
“Menstruate,” Jarold translated.
“(… El Toro takes her one night to town. When he comes back she is bruised in the face and arms. But he has a wad of green. Yankee dollars. He brags about the money.)”
“(But she did, too, poor thing.)” Isabel’s mother bit her lip. “(She made money for him. But she liked the money herself. She said it was easier than straw.)”
“So you knew the girl?” Cricket’s question was translated for the frail Latin woman.
“(Yes, I know her. Her name is Juanita. Juanita Quiroga.)”
Barrett reached inside his jacket and pulled out the manila folder that offered poor protection for the sketch inside.
“(Is this Juanita Quiroga?)”
Barrett displayed Jane Doe’s reconstructed image for the workers. A half-dozen heads nodded in unison.
“(Yes,)” Isabel spoke up. “(That’s her. Where is she? Where did you get that picture?)”
Eleven
“Now at least we know who the victim was,” Barrett declared.
All four wheels spun mud as Jarold’s olive Tahoe pulled away from the Hernandezes and their extended migrant family.
“And we know who her uncle is,” Cricket grated. “Lying son of a bitch. I vote we pay El Toro a visit.”
Barrett agreed. “Even if he’s not the killer, he’s clearly hiding something.”
“Protecting somebody?” Cricket raised an auburn brow.
“Protecting his job, certainly. Maybe his contracts.”
“Or maybe his boss,” Cricket finished that line of conjecture.
Barrett shrugged.
“Do y’all regard the uncle as a suspect, Bear?”
This from Jarold Pearson.
“Not yet. We certainly don’t have enough to warrant an arrest. But this time when we interview Señor Bull, we’ll have some leverage. We know he lied to us when he denied knowing his niece. And we can always go after the man for labor violations and assault. So what Cricket and I will do now is interview the man, see if we can carrot-and-stick some useful information from him. That may lead to an arrest down the line or it may not.”
Cricket belched.
“But first we gotta find the son of a bitch.”
“He won’t be baling straw.” Jarold str
addled ruts silver with water. “Straw has to be dry before it can be baled. There won’t be any crews at work in this damp.”
“First week in months it’s rained and gives our perp a day to ramble,” Cricket grumbled.
“Not that many places for him to go.” Barrett’s cell phone beeped.
“Agent Raines.”
“Sheriff Sessions.” Lou’s voice came back like gravel. “Thought I’d see if you turned up anything useful.”
Barrett summarized events.
“You have any idea where this character’s staying?” Barrett asked.
“None,” came the answer.
“Well, if you see him can you give us a shout?” Barrett requested.
“If I see him, I’ll interview him myself,” the sheriff came back and broke off the call.
“So much for intra-agency relations,” Cricket commented drily, and then to his partner, “and dollars to doughnuts Lou knows where the bastard’s staying.”
“He lives in a trailer.” Jarold Pearson surprised them both.
“A trailer?”
Jarold nodded.
“On the backside of Linton’s deer lease. Not far from Strawman’s Hammock.”
“Does the sheriff know that?”
“I don’t know, but we’re a whole lot closer to the lease than Lou is. And I know the way in.”
“Warden Pearson.” Barrett settled back. “You have the helm.”
Jarold launched his four-wheeler down the road like a bolt from a crossbow. The sandy loam ribbon on which they traveled was saturated with water. Creeks that hadn’t run for months cut sand roads into gullies. The warden’s wipers smeared mud across a windshield that offered only momentary glimpses of the road.
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